


He's Not the Kind of Wheel You Fall Asleep At

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Light Praise Kink, M/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Omnic Crisis, Threesome - M/M/M, Time Travel, sort of??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 12:48:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17447306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: They have to look at the drone footage afterwards to figure out what happened.It went like this:Shuriken.Bullet.Chronal accelerator.Gabriel Reyes.One collided into another and another and by the end, everythingchanged.---They say that it'd be comforting to know your own future. Gabe Reyes knows differently.





	He's Not the Kind of Wheel You Fall Asleep At

**Author's Note:**

> what is time  
> fuck me because i don't even know anymore
> 
> title from [Dead and Lovely](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKfz6DQQaNQ) by Tom Waits  
> soundtrack to writing was Waits's Real Gone

They have to look at the drone footage afterwards to figure out what happened.

It went like this:

Shuriken.

Bullet.

Chronal accelerator.

Gabriel Reyes.

One collided into another and another and by the end, everything _changed_.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe almost doesn’t notice it at first. He’s hunkered down behind a pile of sandbags, laying down cover fire as Martin and O’Brian scramble to get back behind the fortifications. He can feel  bullets slam into the bags, hoping desperately that they built the wall up thick enough. There’s a spray of sand over him, getting past his helmet and onto his face as a round clips the top bag. Gabe paws the sand out of his eyes, gloves making his hands clumsy. He nearly misses the split second flash of blue light.

When his vision clears, it all looks pretty much the same, at first. Billowing smoke, rubble, dust, the smell of cordite on the air. The sound is different, though, the pounding of heavy arms fire mostly replaced by electric sounding zips. He does hear the occasional chatter of an automatic weapon and something slower and heavier, but it’s just...wrong, somehow. Gabe looks around himself more carefully and realizes just how wrong things are. He’s no longer pressed up against sandbags, instead there’s a half-crumbled wall behind him. He gently pokes at the back of his head, but everything seems to be okay.

Catching movement out of his peripheral vision, Gabe’s head snaps to the side. There’s a girl there, maybe a few years younger than him. She’s in a uniform he doesn’t recognize at all, strangely constructed and colored blue and silver with yellow accents. There’s a _thing_ on her chest, and it’s spitting out angry bits of blue light, the same light he saw just a minute ago. She’s bent over a prone form, a man wearing a uniform somewhat similar to hers but rendered in black. At the movement of Gabe’s head she raises her own, meeting his eyes.

She looks down at the man in front of her then back up at him, back and forth twice more.

“Oh, bollocks.”

Gabe opens his mouth to reply, but a flying piece of debris clips him in the side of the head and everything goes dark.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“This isn’t possible.”

“I’m so sorry, Commander, but apparently it is? Winston gave me a replacement accelerator while he’s working on the damaged one. One of Agent Shimada’s shuriken is lodged in it - “

“I’m not blaming you, Oxton. Stop apologizing. I just want to know what happened, and how we undo it.”

“I’ve never had it affect anyone other than me before! I got hit, there was a flash of light that hit Commander Reyes and knocked him out, and when I was checking in on him, I saw _him_. I didn’t see when he arrived, he was just _there_.”

Gabe blinks his eyes open, the sound of his last name clearing some of the muzziness from his brain. The ceiling has the white sterility of a hospital, though it’s quieter than any hospital he’s ever been in. Everything aches, but nothing in particular hurts. When he turns his head that changes fast - there’s an unfortunately familiar tug at his temple that means stitches, and he can’t stop a quiet hiss of pain.

A face appears almost immediately in front of him - the same girl as before. “Hiya! How’re you feeling?” She is far too cheerful sounding for...Gabe doesn’t know what time of day it is, but she’s too cheerful sounding for it.

“I’m fine,” he mutters, before levering himself up.

“Oh, no, I really think you should stay down!” The girl sounds worried but she seems reluctant to touch him, so Gabe is able to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bed. He’s still in his MCCUUs, still dusty and with sand in unfortunate places. His weapons are gone, as are the grenades and ammo he’d had on him. Hands slowly dropping down to the bed after patting himself down, Gabe takes the chance to look around. He’s in some kind of hospital or medical facility. There are a few occupied beds, but they all have curtains drawn around them.

The girl is still next to him, now wringing her hands. Gabe doesn’t think he’s actually seen anyone do that in real life, but it’s the only name he can think of to put to the nervous motions she’s making. He looks past her to see a man, clad in the same blue and silver color scheme as the girl. Obviously a uniform, just as obviously high ranking, but not any kind of combat gear. Gabe looks at his face, and it’s…

It’s…

Gabe shakes his head, trying to clear it. Things are still fuzzy, but he’s sure that he _knows_ this man, somehow. He just has no idea how. He has to be near his fifties, but Gabe can’t match him up to any previous brass he’s come in contact with.

The man tilts his head. “Do you know who I am?” His voice is rough, like something in there is scarred. Gabe is about to answer no when a tall blonde doctor comes up and hands the man a chart, murmuring something to him that Gabe can’t hear. The man turns his head to talk to her and there’s something about the angle of his head when he turns back and the bright blue eyes that catch his own and -

“Jack?”

It can’t be, because the Jack Morrison he knows is nineteen, but the man’s - Jack’s? - eyes widen, and the girl looks like she’s an inch from clapping her hands in glee. “Well,” says the voice that’s now recognizable but must have been through hell to end up sounding like it does, “I’m not sure if that makes things better or worse.”

The blonde doctor steps forward, before turning back to Jack. “Go check on -” she shoots a glance at Gabe, “The other patient.” Jack seems reluctant to go, but she gives him a gentle push. “Now,” she says in a light German accent, turning back to Gabe. “I am Doctor Angela Ziegler. You’re safe, and other than a bump on the head you seem to be in relatively good shape. How are you feeling?”

“All right. Confused. Where am I?” Gabe asks hesitantly. There’s a repeated logo he keeps seeing, on Jack and the girl’s uniforms, on the walls, on the neck of the doctor’s shirt. It’s too simple, just a circle and a few lines - it doesn’t tell him anything about where he is.

Jack is back, and shakes a head at Dr Ziegler’s raised eyebrows. She turns back to Gabe, ignoring his previous question. “Can you tell me your name, how old you are?”

He looks at Jack, looks at the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, at the greying hair. It’s Jack, but he doesn’t know him. Gabe opens his mouth, then closes it again. He doesn’t think he’s in enemy territory, but it doesn’t mean he should volunteer up everything about himself. At his obvious pause, Jack rolls his eyes. “Your name is Gabriel Reyes. You’re from Los Angeles. Your birthday is January 8th. You’re allergic to mango.”

Dr Ziegler raises her eyebrows at the last statement. “Really?”

Jack shrugs. “Well, you know. Before.” Gabe doesn’t know what he means by that, but everything else is right.

Both sets of blue eyes are turned back on him, and Gabe finds himself nodding. “Yeah, that’s all correct. And I’m twenty-two.”

The doctor and Jack exchange a few sentences, none of which Gabe understands. (“SEP?” “Still a few years off.” “The Crisis?” “Not there yet, not widespread, I don’t think. At least not under that name.”)

Annoyed, Gabe interrupts. “Could someone tell me what’s going on?”

The girl, who Gabe had completely forgotten about, bounces forward. “Hi again! My name is Lena Oxton, and I’m unstuck in time.”

She’s about to continue when Gabe says confusedly, “Like in Slaughterhouse-Five?”

Oxton’s grin is blinding. “Oh you’re a reader! Lovely! No, actually. Well, a little. I was part of this experimental program, where there was this prototype, see, and -” Jack clears his throat, and  Oxton’s grin fades a little. “Getting to the point, I have this thing, my chronal accelerator.” She taps the device on her chest, now shining steadily. “When it works, I’m in there here and now. When it doesn’t, I get a little offset from the current timeline. We were in battle and it was damaged, and now you’re here.”

“How?”

Before anyone can answer, an almost-familiar voice growls out, “Oxton, I’m taking you out of the field until we put bulletproof glass around that thing. My head hurts like a motherfucker.” A man steps out from behind one of the curtained beds, presumably the one Oxton was bent over on the field earlier, given the uniform. He has a hand to the side of his head and when he lowers it Gabe is looking into the same brown eyes he sees in the mirror every morning.

“What the hell?” The two voices, despite minor differences in tone, sound as one.

Jack sighs. “Gabe, meet...Gabe.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

They keep them apart, which is probably for the best. They try and keep everyone else out, too: Gabe’s brain can’t handle too much more right now. The first person to sneak in and speak with him is a man covered in strange armor. Well, it looks like armor at first, until Gabe realizes that the man only has one flesh arm, and the armor is actually part of him. There are all kinds of tubes coming out of him that he doesn’t understand - is that a goddamn _sword_ on his back? - and he’s clad in the same black with red accents that his older self wore.

“I would like to apologize,” the man says in a slightly metallic voice after he gives a short bow. “We had to examine the footage to be sure, but it appears that a bullet hit one of my shuriken, deflecting it into Lena’s accelerator. Although it appears to be chance, I cannot help but feel somewhat responsible.” This must be Shimada, whose name he’s heard a few times over the past few hours.

“It’s fine,” Gabe says, because what else can he say to that? Before Shimada can respond, both of their heads turn at a commotion at the entrance to the medbay. There’s a man in a hat and some kind of cape arguing with Dr Ziegler, gesturing over to Shimada and Gabe.

Gabe looks over to see Shimada’s red eyes roll up in what seems to be familiar consternation. “I would apologize for what you are about to experience next, but there are no real apologies for him.”

The man strides over to them, clapping a hand to Shimada’s shoulder. “So I heard this was your fault.” He’s also in the black and red - it appears that there are at least two different organizations here, at least going by color scheme. Instead of the almost normal combat uniform of his older counterpart, this man seems to have...spurs? And chaps? And a truly ridiculous hat, a gaudy brass belt buckle, and what looks like a gang tattoo on his arm. Plus hanging out of his mouth -

Gabe frowns. “Should you really be smoking in a hospital?”

Shimada starts laughing as the man throws up his hands. “Fuckin’ Christ, I’m gettin’ it from both of them now.” He shoves Shimada away, calling after him as he walks out “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Tin Man.” He turns his attention back to Gabe. “Now where were we?” He gives a crooked smile, full lips shaped around the cigar in his mouth, and Gabe is vaguely horrified that in the midst of all this chaos something unfamiliar twists low in his gut at the sight. “I’m Jesse McCree. And you’re Gabriel Reyes.”

Gabe nods. McCree is too cocky by half, but unlike everyone else he’s met so far, he seems to find this all highly amusing. “How old are you?” he asks, eyes bright with curiosity.

“Twenty two.”

Gabe finds his chin caught in a strong grip, calloused fingers turning his head this way and that. He goes along with it for a minute, but when McCree’s finger strokes over his cheekbone he jerks back. McCree’s grin sharpens. “Well, then. Aren’t we just -”

He’s cut off by - well, by Gabriel Reyes. The older one. He grabs McCree’s arm and yanks him away, muttering something about leaving him alone for five goddamned minutes as McCree snickers.

That was…

Odd.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe is kept fairly isolated. They tell him certain things, not others. He’s at the main headquarters of some kind of peacekeeping military organization, one that’s part of the UN. No one will tell him the name of it, and he gets it - he’ll be involved in it in the future, so it’s best to keep names out as much as they can. Jack is the head of it, the Strike Commander. They’re the ones in blue and silver.

The black and red ones, well. Apparently he gets to be in charge of them, eventually. They won’t tell him the name of that group either, but he knows that they’re black ops of some kind. There’s some kind of war going on, but no one wants to tell him much. Gabe tries not to get too frustrated, but it’s annoying as hell when every person he talks to has to cut themselves off every minute or two.

He watches. He waits. He thinks. It’s not like he has anything else to do.

At first he’s confined to the medbay. Then they start to let him into the black ops communal areas, the kitchen and lounge and such. Apparently there aren’t that many of them and they’re on mission constantly, so almost no one is around. He sees a woman once at a distance, tall and angular with red hair, but no less than five people hustle her away from him before he can get more than a glimpse of her.

He finally pins Jack down - they’re still keeping him away from his older self - and gets him to admit that Gabe’s been thrown twenty nine years into the future. Jesus. He doesn’t even know how to process it, more than double the life he’s already lived. At least that’s something - he does live. Given he’s in the Marines, that definitely wasn’t a guarantee.

After three days they finally let him have a little bit of freedom, though they assign Genji - despite military tradition, he claims to not like his family name - to be his babysitter. He prises bits and pieces out of him over the hours. Gabe stays in the military, never gets out. He’s been with the black ops group for decades. Apparently he goes through...something with Jack. Something in his not-too-distant future. No one will say what it is, but it’s clear that it’s major and it fundamentally changes him.

That’s obvious just looking at him. Gabe at twenty two is in peak physical condition - he’s built up as much muscle as he can after four years in the Marines and has barely a scrap of fat on him. But his future self? He’s a few inches taller and a hell of a lot more than a few inches broader. His musculature is completely changed from how Gabe is now, and he can’t imagine how it happens. He’s also apparently not sat on his laurels despite his position - he’s covered in scars, especially his face. Gabe runs fingers over his own smooth skin, wonders how it will happen. Wonders if he’ll see it coming.

He keeps watching. He gets more out of it now that they’ve loosened his leash.

Reyes and Jack and Ana: Ana is Jack’s second in command, and more than a few people are surprised that Gabe doesn’t know her. She smiles, shakes her head, says it’s still a few years off. There’s something about her, something stabilizing. He wants to get to know her but -

Reyes and Jack and Ana. They’re their own unit, somehow. They twine around each other like cats when they’re together, always aware of where the others are, ever turning and twisting so they’re a constant circle facing towards a center that cannot hold. Gabe can feel the history, can read it loud and clear in his own body language. They constantly argue with each other, but it’s the bickering of old married people that’s all ultimately rooted in love.

Gabe checked his older self’s fingers during one of the few times he removes his gloves. No ring. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though: he has superiors that are married but don’t wear their rings on the job.

They get careless, let him see his older self more. They don’t talk to each other, but Gabe can look at how he acts, how he works. He commands a lot of respect, that’s clear. Earned, not ordered. People from everywhere - tech people, agents, men in obviously expensive suits - talk to him, and listen closely when he replies. As much as they debate over just about everything, it’s clear that Jack and Ana listen to him as well.

Then there’s McCree.

If he’s like a cat with Jack and Ana, Reyes is like an octopus with McCree - constantly pulling him in over and over. It’s never obvious, but Gabe knows himself. He pulls at him with looks, with words, with a few fingers wrapped around a bicep and with knees pressed together under the table. McCree in turn lets him, lets himself fall towards Reyes like light into a black hole - never quite getting there, but always continuously falling. Gabe is inexplicably reminded of Zeno’s paradoxes, some bullshit philosophy lesson he got in one of his NCO training classes. The idea they’d tried to explain was that if you have a length and cut it in half over and over again, you’ll never reach your goal. There’s always another half to be cut.

That’s McCree and Reyes. They’re constantly almost, almost there, but there’s always that tiny bit of space. Always that last fraction of distance, a minute mockery of professionalism.

Gabe isn’t exactly sure what they are to each other. He learns from Genji that the black ops group doesn’t officially have a second like Ana is to Jack, but it’s basically McCree anyways. It’s deeper than that, though. Some kind of strange dependence that goes both ways, that makes Gabe uneasy.

McCree corners him one day, when Gabe is in on the couch in the black ops lounge reading. They won’t give him any access to the internet nor any book more recent than his own time, but he’s got to pass the hours somehow. Gabe looks up at the weight that settles on the cushion beside him. There’s a whole couch’s worth of room, but McCree sits himself right next to Gabe.

“So Gabe. Tell me about yourself.” His tone is mild, the words innocent, but there’s some undercurrent that Gabe doesn’t know what to do with.

“What do you want to know? You know far more about me than I do about you.”

“Mmm. In a technical sense, I suppose. You’ve never been too forthcomin’ about your early life, was wondering what you’re up to right now in your timeline.” Jesse’s chin rests on his hand, displaying the tattoo on his inner forearm. Deadlock Rebels, it reads, along with a date that’s too blurry for him to read.

Instead of answering, Gabe nods to the tattoo. “I take it that was your early life?”

McCree glances down at it, smirking a bit as his eyes lift back up to meet Gabe’s. “You could say that. You’re the one that pulls me out of it, in any event.”

Gabe blinks. Huh. He’s not sure if that makes things clearer or not. “I’m in the Marines,” he finds himself saying. “Four years, enlisted after high school. As soon as I get back, I’m going to re-up. Just made sergeant.”

“You like it?”

Shrugging, Gabe looks away from McCree’s uncomfortably knowing gaze. “I’m good at it. Feels like I’m making a difference, bit by bit.” He shrugs again. “Someone has to.”

There’s a touch just below his ear, and Gabe looks up, startled. McCree is looking at him with a an inscrutable expression on his face. “That’s always been in you, hasn’t it,” he murmurs, as his thumb traces the edge of his jaw. It’s a thin little stroke, just his fingertip, but it feels like a line of fire on his skin. Gabe sucks in a breath as silently and motionlessly as he can, only to feel like he’s about to choke on it when his older self appears out of nowhere, behind McCree.

“Jesse,” he says, and McCree pulls his hand back. “You really, really shouldn’t do that.”

McCree twists his head back to look at Reyes, and Gabe’s eyes get caught on the long line of his throat. “I really, really, think I should.”

Instead of looking at McCree, Reyes looks at Gabe. The weight of his regard pulls Gabe’s eyes away from McCree’s neck, and he can feel his ears doing their best to redden under his skin tone. “He doesn’t know the game you’re playing, doesn’t know the score.”

“Really.” McCree sounds speculative.

“That wasn’t a challenge.”

“Then I think you should’ve known better. Remembered who you’re talkin’ to.”

Reyes breaks the stare to cuff McCree across the back of the head, and Gabe finally feels like he can breathe again. “Come on, ingrate. Meeting with Jack and Ana over the thing in Monaco.”

McCree sighs. “Hell. Again? That guy keeps poppin’ up like a bad penny.” He stands and walks off with Reyes, but Gabe stays frozen in his seat. He’s thrown, and doesn’t quite know how to handle it. On one hand Gabe is used to doing well at whatever he attempts, used to holding all the cards even when it’s something new. On the other, he realizes that right now he is vastly out of his depth with these two men and their history that he could easily drown in. He doesn’t know what just happened, but he’s equal parts terrified and aroused and has no idea why.

-x-x-x-x-x-

He’s in nearly the same place in the lounge late the next evening, having fallen asleep in a sinfully comfortable armchair. Gabe hears a familiar voice - his own voice - and it pulls him just out of sleep.

“-f I had it my way we’d just keep him in an isolation chamber. We have no idea how any of this is going to affect him. Me.” A sigh. “This makes my head hurt.”

“Do you remember any of this?”

“Not a single bit. But he’s in our time right now, so I have no idea if it’ll all hit once we get him back where he’s supposed to be. I remember the firefight he was talking about, got hit in the head in the same place as him, but I never left Afghanistan. Certainly not to end up in fucking Belgium in the middle of a fight with Null Sector nearly thirty years in the future.”

“So if you can’t remember, then maybe it doesn’t matter what happens to him.” There’s a speculative tone in McCree’s voice.

“No. To everything you’re thinking, no. I don’t- he -” Reyes trails off, frustrated. Almost ashamed? “I haven’t figured that out yet about myself.”

“ _Really_. Late bloomer, were we?”

“Just because your adolescence was spent in a den of iniquity doesn’t mean it was that way for all of us. We don’t all get to make our own gangs.”

McCree replies, but Gabe sinks back down into sleep before he can hear what he says.

-x-x-x-x-x-

After some cajoling, they let him use the gyms. There’s an air of disuse about them - it’s obvious they’re not the training facilities that everyone else must use. Genji stays with him, though neither has the breath for chatting. Gabe runs, cranking the treadmill’s speed up until the motor whines under him but it’s still not enough. Running as fast as he can but staying in place - and isn’t that a heavy handed metaphor for himself right now? He’s soaked with sweat by the end, borrowed t-shirt clinging and heavy with perspiration

They head back to the black ops kitchen after to get water before showering. Gabe pulls a bottle from the fridge and drinks the whole thing in one go with the door still open, cool air swirling around him. When he lowers the bottle he sees Reyes sitting at the kitchen table with McCree leaning over just behind with barely an inch of space between them, various maps spread out on the table in front of them.

Instead of looking at the papers they’re staring at him, though: Reyes with a complicated expression that Gabe can’t even begin to parse despite their shared face, and McCree with a smirk that’s nearly predatory. Gabe is suddenly, desperately aware of the sheen of sweat on his skin, of the shirt that’s plastered to his body, of his nipples pebbling in the cold from the open fridge. McCree doesn’t look away but leans down a few inches to whisper in Reyes’s ear. Reyes shakes his head and starts to gather up the maps, pushing McCree away when he moves his chair back.

Gabe makes his escape.

After lunch few hours later, Gabe is about to follow Genji back to their quarters - Gabe has been stuck in a spare room just across the hall from him - when there’s a heavy hand on his shoulder. McCree. He backs off when Gabe tenses, raising his hands in the air as he retreats a step.

“2300 tonight, room 140A. I’ll tell you about what they’re keeping from you.”

Gabe narrows his eyes. He doesn’t know McCree, but he knows enough that he’s not someone to offer something up without some kind of deal. “Really.”

McCree smiles that slanted smile, the one that throws Gabe just a bit off balance for some reason every time he sees it. “Press your hand to the biometric pad, same as your quarters. It’ll let you in.” He starts to walk away, before turning back. “Ask Athena how to get there, she’ll tell you.”

Gabe is still staring after him when Genji finally shows up. “Ready?” Gabe nods, and they walk down the hallway. After Genji lends him a coat he’s finally going to be let out of doors - Genji said there’s a hiking trail he often uses.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Certainly.”

Gabe debates how to phrase it, decides to go with bluntness. “Do you trust McCree?”

He can feel the man looking at him in surprise. “With my life. With the lives of others. Despite his, well, everything, he is a good man at heart. Even as I wish to hit him over the head with his own gun half of the time.”

They walk farther, turning down the hallway towards the black ops quarters. “Who are he and I to each other, now?”

Genji doesn’t say anything at first, and their footsteps sound loudly in the hard-floored hallway. “That’s a question I do not feel I can or should answer.”

They’re quiet the rest of the way, but Gabe’s mind keeps working.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe glances up and down the otherwise empty hallway. This is the only door, and even though there’s no number on it Athena gave him clear directions. He presses his hand to the black pad by the handle and is vaguely surprised when he hears a faint click at the lock disengaging, despite what McCree had said. The door opens easily, silently when he tries it, onto a small foyer with a short passageway coming off of it. There’s light coming from a room at the end.

He’s not sure if he should announce himself, doesn’t know where McCree is. The door closes behind him as silently as it opened as he pads down the carpeted hallway towards the lit room. He takes one step in and then freezes, eyes nearly bugging out of his head.

Jesus leaping _Christ._

There’s a bed in the middle of the room and McCree is stretched out across it on his back widthwise with his head towards Gabe, naked as the day he was born. His older self is on the opposite side, one knee on the bed with the other leg on the ground, fucking into McCree with deep, smooth strokes. Reyes’s head is bent and McCree’s eyes are closed in pleasure, so neither notice him right away.

Gabe doesn’t know what to do, where to look, but his eyes are drawn to his older self. He’s so different - his body like a sculptor slapped slabs of clay together to serve as muscle and barely bothered to smooth them out. His biceps bulge as he holds McCree’s legs, pressing them down, powerful quadriceps shifting in his legs as he moves. He’s also absolutely covered with scars, and Gabe’s mouth runs dry as he realizes the damage he’s going to have to take to get to this point. His eyes stick on Reyes’s hip: a starburst of paler flesh where a round exited. Gabe can’t help but touch his own hip where the scar is fresher, only a year old.

At the movement of his hand, Reyes notices him. “Jesse, what the fuck did you do?” Despite the tone, despite the words, his hips keep moving like a metronome, slamming into McCree over and over.

McCree’s eyes slit open and focus on Gabe for a moment before shutting again, his smile growing lazy and wide. “Don’t tell me you’re disappointed, darlin’. I got us a present.”

Reyes rolls his eyes, still not stopping his hips. “A present for yourself, you hedonist. You just want to fuck with his head.”

“Not just his head, sweetheart. You think too small.” His eyes open fully, and catches Gabe’s gaze like a trap snapping shut. “Come here.” He speaks like someone who’s used to being listened to, and Gabe has spent the past four years getting ordered around. He’s standing next to the bed before he knows what his feet are doing. McCree reaches up, and Gabe is looking so hard at the muscles shifting over his ribs that he doesn’t notice McCree’s hands on his hips until they’re there. He’s suddenly aware that he’s hard, so hard it hurts.

McCree is looking at him upside down from the bed. “Ever had anyone suck you, Gabe?” Gabe’s eyes are wide and his mouth is dry. He jerkily nods, but can’t open his mouth to answer.

“Lidmarie Ruiz, senior year,” comes Reyes’s voice from the other side of the bed. “And Alexandria...something or other.”

Gabe licks his lips ineffectively. “Ha- Harris.” All his attention is on McCree’s hands, which are rubbing small circles into the strip of skin between his pants and shirt.

“You weren’t kidding about not figuring yourself out. How long after him?” McCree asks Reyes.

“A few years.”

“Mmm. Think you’ll mind if we jumpstart it?” Reyes disrupts his steady tempo for the first time to give a particularly hard thrust, and McCree’s laugh dissolves halfway into a moan. His fingers clench at Gabe’s hips, and Gabe can’t help but inhale a sharp breath that neither man misses.

Clever fingers undo his fly, and broad hands tug his pants down until they’re at mid thigh. They stop, and Gabe drags his gaze a few inches in front of him to McCree’s face, looking up at him with a low-burning heat in his eyes. “If you want to stop, we can,” he murmurs. “No one’s forcin’ anyone into something, here.”

Gabe is only twenty two with his whole life ahead of him, he’s never even thought about sex with a man before, but he knows right now that if he says no he’ll regret it forever. He nods, and McCree gives a grin that makes his cock twitch in his underwear. McCree doesn’t miss it, and pulls the last bit of fabric down. “Thought so.”

A hand wraps around him and it’s like nothing he’s ever felt - gone are the memories of slim fingers and soft skin, forever after this he knows he’s going to crave gun calluses and broad digits that can wrap all the way around him with room to spare. He’s tugged forward gently, until he’s close enough that McCree can paint his lips with the wet, wet head of Gabe’s cock. Everything is so sensitive it’s nearly painful, and he bites hard into his lip as McCree lets his head dangle off the edge of the mattress, mouth hanging open and inviting.

“Go ahead,” Reyes murmurs, and Gabe isn’t sure which of them he’s talking to. It’s McCree that reaches a hand back, pulls Gabe forward and into his mouth with one hand on his ass and another feeding his dick past his lips. He keeps going, going until his nose is pressed against Gabe’s balls, until Gabe can see the head of his cock pressing out against his throat. Everything is warm and wet and tight but manageable, right up until a wet tongue moves eagerly against the top of his cock and Gabe has to lock his knees before he falls over.

McCree draws back just before his older self starts fucking harder, forcing McCree to take Gabe down to the base whether he wants to or not. McCree moans, and the vibrations around Gabe make him breathe heavily and close his eyes. It’s smooth for a minute, until McCree pulls off. He looks up at Gabe with swollen lips and dampness at the corner of his eyes, swallowing before he rasps out, “I’ve been fucked harder by the Coast Guard.”

Gabe narrows his eyes, and pushes back in to McCree’s wet, waiting mouth. He looks up at Reyes, and takes a few seconds to observe his rhythm before starting to move in counterpoint. He wants to brace himself on McCree’s shoulder but isn’t sure if he can touch, isn’t sure if he should. He’s saved from the indecision when McCree grabs one of his hands and wraps it around his forearm before moving his own hands back to Gabe’s hips. Gabe does the same on the other side, and it steadies him out, gives him something to anchor himself both physically and mentally.

It’s too much, too much to feel a mouth around him expertly working all the weak spots that Gabe didn’t even know he had, too much to see McCree’s angry red cock slapping against his muscled stomach with every thrust, too much to see himself older and larger and so much _more_ in every way fucking into this man like he belongs there, too much to see Reyes’s eyes locked on Jesse’s mouth all wet and red around Gabe’s dick. Gabe doesn’t know what to concentrate on, and it overwhelms him in a wave of heat and lust. He squeezes McCree’s arms too tightly, and comes suddenly with an embarrassingly loud gasp.

McCree pulls back, just enough to let Gabe fill his mouth before swallowing lazily, contentedly. He doesn’t let go, keeping the head of Gabe’s slowly softening cock in his mouth. He tongues it languidly, pressing into the slit here, rubbing at that spot under the crown there. Gabe is oversensitive and trembling, but he can’t imagine pulling away.

Across the bed, Reyes is still fucking McCree. Along with the muscles and scars, Gabe apparently gets the stamina of a goddamned draft horse. Reyes changes things up for the first time, folding McCree inwards as he lets his legs go to brace on his shoulders, his pace speeding up and turning just this side of brutal. Gabe can feel the small sounds McCree is making around his cock, and it’s starting to make him hard again.

Before he can think of doing anything with it, Reyes wraps a hand around McCree’s dick. He doesn’t jack him, doesn’t move his hand at all. He just quietly says, “Come,” and McCree does, spilling slick, hot whiteness all over his chest. As arresting as the sight is, Gabe’s eyes are drawn up to his older self. His hips slow, pause, start again. Gabe wouldn’t know he came at all if he wasn’t looking at a version of himself, if he didn’t know how he always holds his breath for just a few seconds, if he didn’t know how his hands will involuntarily clench down on whatever they’re holding.

McCree finally, finally lets Gabe’s cock fall out of his mouth and raises his head to look down his body at Reyes. Without pulling out Reyes moves his other knee onto the bed and lets his body fall onto McCree’s, heedless of the mess between them. They kiss, long and slow and filthy, and Reyes pulls his mouth away reluctantly before looking up at Gabe.

“Out.” It’s said with the same absolute confidence as when he told McCree to come, as when Gabe heard him give orders to his team members earlier. The tone of assurance that’s seated in the knowledge that he will unquestionably be obeyed. Gabe tucks away his erection, shaking fingers fumbling at his fly.

Reyes’s eyes follow him as he backs out of the room, even as he lowers his lips back down to McCree’s. He starts to mouth his way down McCree’s stubbled neck as Gabe tries not to stumble down the hallway, and Gabe opens the outer door to the faint sound of McCree crying out in pleasure behind him.

Gabe leans against the closed door, taking deep breaths. When he raises his head he sees the time on a wall display: 23:36. Half an hour, and the very foundation of who Gabe is has been shaken. He walks slowly back to his quarters, and can’t remember a single step of it afterwards.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe hides in his borrowed quarters for most of the next day.

There are certain things that Gabe has always accepted about himself. He’s good looking thanks to the genetic lottery, his body has always been fit due to training and a childhood love of sports, and he always assumed that at some point he’d use those two facts to meet a nice pretty girl and settle down. He doesn’t know if he’ll be in the military forever - well, at least he didn’t used to, at least - and wasn’t really clear on how he’d actually meet that nice girl, but he assumed it was something that would eventually happen. An expected eventuality, like puberty or grey hair.

It’s the modern world and Gabe’s an easygoing person, he’s never had a problem with gay guys. He’s best friends with Jack, for Christ’s sake, and he and his boyfriend can be sickeningly sweet together. (Gabe suddenly wonders what Vincent’s up to, if he and Jack are still together. If anyone would still be with their high school sweetheart it _would_ be Jack fucking Morrison.) Gabe has been hit on enough in his lifetime by men, but he always brushes it off goodnaturedly. Thanks for the compliment, but no thank you, not for me.

Although apparently not anymore.

He can’t tell if it’s him that’s changed, or the circumstances are so fucked that his libido threw up its hands and said _well, this just might as well happen_. Or maybe it’s just McCree. Gabe wants to figure out why he has such a reaction to the man, but every time they come in contact he ends up so overwhelmed by everything about him that afterwards all he can remember are knowing eyes and a velvety smooth accent and the weirdly comforting smell of gun oil.

And now, memories of that mouth. Jesus _Christ_. That’s something he’s not getting over anytime soon.

Gabe is dragged out in the evening - it’s Sunday night, and apparently all of the black ops group and some of the people from the main group have a standing dinner together for whoever’s on site. It’s apparently a rule that they don’t discuss work, so it’s deemed safe for Gabe to attend. Not that he really has a choice - Genji is going, so Gabe is going.

It’s a potluck, and as every person seems to be from somewhere else the dishes are varied and unfamiliar. Gabe sees a plate of recognizable empanadas, and grabs a few along with bits of this and that. Conversation flows around him and Gabe feels oddly comfortable with it all. He doesn’t know these people, but he knows their type: hardworking and loyal, building up a collection of random colleagues into something that’s not just coworkers but a type of family.

He absently bites into one of the empanadas, and nearly chokes on it. He _knows_ this recipe. It’s his mother’s. Gabe stares down at the shreds of chicken, the chunks of egg and olive and perfectly caramelized onion, the little twists up the side that he spent hours at the kitchen table learning how to do correctly.

Gabe knows that he and Reyes are the same person. Age changes many things, but it doesn’t change that they have the same eyes, the same voice. The same laugh, which made Jack nearly choke on his coffee the first time he heard it. At the same time, whatever Reyes goes through over the decades changes him so much that Gabe really can’t see much of himself in him. But this - food made with love, memories of a mother who is still alive for Gabe but might not be for Reyes…

He leans over and murmurs to Genji that he needs some air. Genji is involved in a conversation with Oxton, and waves him off absently with a reminder to not go far. The black ops kitchen where they’re eating is on the third floor, and there’s a door to the outside nearby. It leads to a balcony that goes around the whole facility - Genji and Gabe ran about half of it the other day, but they had to stop before they got too close to something that Gabe wasn’t supposed to see.

Gabe slips out quietly, leans his arms against the railing as he looks out at the distant lights of what he’s been told is Zürich. He has to take their word for it - he has no idea what Switzerland looks like, for all he knows he’s actually in China or Pennsylvania or Venezuela.

“Too much for you?” Gabe nearly leaps out of his skin, turning as he does to see a red glow in the darkness. McCree, with his ever-present cigar. Gabe hadn’t seen him leave.

McCree steps out of the shadows, ashing the cigar against the railing next to Gabe. “I haven’t been around so many people recently,” Gabe finally says, when he realizes McCree is waiting for an answer.

“Mmm.” They’re silent for a while, Gabe looking out at the lights and McCree smoking, each thinking their own thoughts.

“I was talkin’ with Gabe last night,” McCree says abruptly, and Gabe has to translate for a minute in his head - he means the other Gabe, and presumably after he’d left them. “He doesn’t remember any of what happened to him when he was you. We’re not sure what that means. I mean, we’ve tried to keep you away from things but if you go back to your own time with all of,” McCree gestures around him, “ _this_ in your head, it’ll make him - make you - a different person.”

Gabe shrugs, feeling weirdly complacent at the moment about it all. “I get what you’re saying. But at the same time, it’s not exactly like there’s a lot we can do about it right now. Jack said his scientist was working on it.”

His face is in too much shadow to see, but Gabe is fairly certain that McCree is rolling his eyes. “Winston’s great, he really is. And he can be brilliant, but sometimes…” he trails off, shaking his head, pausing, then shrugging. “It’s only been a few days. You seem a fair hand at rolling with things, I’m sure you can take it.”

“I think it’s you who was taking it last night.” Gabe has no idea where the words came from, and as soon as they’re out of his mouth he wants to grab them out of the air and stuff them back in.

They’d been slightly angled toward each other, but now McCree pulls his head back and slowly tilts it to the side, eyes locked on Gabe’s face. It reminds Gabe unnervingly of a snake getting ready to strike, and wonders how screwed he is right now.

“Listen, boy,” he says, so softly that Gabe automatically leans in a little to hear better. McCree catches his jaw in his hand, an echo of that very first day, but this time Gabe isn’t getting away. He moves Gabe’s head until he’s facing McCree, shaking him a little until Gabe meets his eyes. They’re dark and glinting in the bits of light from the kitchen, and Gabe feels like he missed a step at the edge of a cliff and the only thing keeping him from tumbling over is the hand on his face.

“I feel you have a fundamental misunderstandin' of my and Gabriel’s relationship,” he says, still in that soft, calm voice. “You might think you’re grown, feel like an adult with your gun at your side and the stripes on your sleeve. But compared to what’s coming for you, you’re a child. What Gabe goes through - what we’ve been through together over the past decade and then some…” His eyebrows lower, slowly. “Just because you’ve been in my mouth, it doesn’t mean a goddamned thing. You’ve got a couple of decades to go before you’re him, before we’re us. Before you get to talk to me like that.” McCree lets Gabe’s chin go. “Know your place.”

McCree steps back. Gabe doesn’t move a muscle, not even when McCree stubs his cigar out on the railing a bare inch from where Gabe’s hand is white-knuckle locked around it. McCree pockets the butt, pauses for a moment like he’s about to say something, then shakes his head and opens the door into the building. The noise from inside increases for a second, dying down as the door shuts slowly. Gabe remains as he is for another few seconds, before letting his shoulders slump and his hands relax their grip. It takes another five minutes before he goes back inside.

He sits back down next to Genji, who shoves a plate of cookies at him as he continues to talk with the giant gorilla with the tiny glasses. Gabe barely even blinks at this - the past few days have been so goddamn strange that having a primate who is nearsighted and apparently loves peanut butter cookies given the rate he’s putting them away at barely registers.

Gabe is just thinking about seeing if he can escape when he feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle. There’s a breath of warm air over his ear, and a now-familiar voice drawls, “2200. Don’t be late.”

This is sure to go well.

-x-x-x-x-x-

He almost doesn’t go.

Last time McCree had said he would tell him what they were keeping from him, and instead he ended up with the best orgasm of his life and a new view on his own sexuality. He supposes McCree was right, technically - at least he knows a little more about what the two are to each other.

After their encounter at dinner Gabe isn’t sure why McCree would want him back, at least not for the assumed purpose. Maybe this time they really would talk. Or something.

Gabe is still debating with himself as he walks down the hallway, as he presses his hand to the biometric pad. He spent so much time nearly talking himself out of it that it’s almost a quarter past the hour by the time he tentatively makes his way through the darkened hallway. Once again the room at the end is lit, but this time Gabe can hear the slap of skin against skin before he gets there.

He still blinks at the tableau before him. It’s not what he expected at all.

At the foot of the bed Reyes is resting his head on his folded arms and his back is one long sinuous curve upwards. McCree is pressing down on the center of his back with one hand, though it’s obvious Reyes isn’t going anywhere, and the other steadies his hip as he fucks into Reyes.

Gabe is thrown. He’s spent the past week having Reyes built up to him, this physically and mentally powerful man that everyone looks up to and respects, and here he has his ass in the air and his cock dripping on the bed and looks like he fucking _loves_ it.

“So I believe we had a conversation earlier about misunderstandings and taking it,” McCree says easily, barely breathing hard as his hips snap forward. Reyes rolls his head over to look over at Gabe, sighs, and tucks his head back down like Gabe is a fly that will eventually buzz its way out of the room.

McCree moves differently than Reyes - where Reyes was all power and efficiency, McCree is a strange combination of grace and sultriness. The roll of his hips is somehow absolutely filthy, but he delicately pushes Reyes’s hips this way and that to meet him at the perfect angle every time. Gabe can’t stop staring at where their bodies meet: he saw last night just how big McCree is, and his future body just - accepts it. Gabe’s own ass tightens for a moment, and he can’t imagine fitting anything up there, much less enjoying it the way he apparently will.

“Do we need to continue the conversation? Or do you want to sit back and enjoy the show?” asks McCree, nodding his head over at an armchair.

Gabe understands that this is different than before. Before was an invitation, but right now McCree and Reyes are a closed unit that has no room for him in it. He hesitantly walks over, and has to pass close to the end of the bed to do so. He can smell it - sweat and come and the plasticky neutrality of lube. Gabe carefully sits in the chair McCree indicated, shifting a little so as not to pinch his trapped erection.

From this angle, he can see Reyes taking McCree. Gabe wonders, dazedly, how this is his life, wonders how many people have seen themselves get fucked from behind before in real time. He realizes that McCree is talking.

“ -ee how well you open for me? It took us a while to figure each other out, took a while to perfect things. But lord, you’re beautiful now. You’ve got a lot to look forward to.” It’s silent for a few minutes other than the sound of wet flesh on flesh, of the occasional small noise from Reyes.

“When was your first time, darlin'? I realized I don’t actually know. For this, I mean.” McCree gives a particularly hard thrust in, in the unlikely case that Reyes didn’t know what he was talking about.

Reyes turns his head, one glassy eye visible. “Not for a long, long time from him,” he murmurs.

“Anyone I know?” At Reyes’s silence, McCree snickers delightedly, hips speeding up. “Really now. Who?”

Reyes blinks slowly, makes a small head movement over at Gabe. “He shouldn’t know.”

“Give me a hint.”

Silence, then a sigh. “Rome.”

McCree laughs low in his throat, something that makes Gabe throb in his pants. “So _that’s_ what Cape Town was all about.” Reyes just tucks his head back down.

There’s some invisible signal a minute or two later, and both McCree and Reyes move. Reyes pushes himself up on his arms, his head hanging heavily down. Bracing himself, he pushes back into McCree, that same power from before harnessed underneath the other man. McCree reaches down to presumably grab Reyes’s dick, but stops halfway, hand grabbing onto Reyes’s thick thigh. His hips stutter, and he presses in hard as he lets out a long breath.

McCree practically lays down on Reyes’s back, who doesn’t seem to notice the weight. He grinds his hips forward slowly as he wraps a hand around Reyes. Half a minute of steady, tight hand motions, and Reyes comes all over McCree’s hand. They don’t move for a long minute, long enough for Gabe to shift uncomfortably in his chair as he gets ever harder. Eventually McCree pulls out, and he gently pushes Reyes over onto his back. Like before, they kiss, lazy and familiar. Despite the fact that Gabe has seen them inside each other, this is somehow the most intimate thing he's seen by far. Gabe looks away, uncomfortable.

McCree pulls back and stands, leaving Reyes come-covered and used on the bed. “Stand up, pull your pants down,” McCree says to Gabe, not looking up as he examines the stickiness still on his hand. Gabe scrambles to his feet, wanting to show McCree that he’d listened to him but not wanting to seem too eager. He pulls his sweats and underwear down slowly, shuffling forward at McCree’s gesture.

Although McCree is naked he’s absolutely confident in his movements, stalking forward and slipping behind Gabe in just moments. Gabe tries to turn his head but an implacable hand keeps his head directed toward the bed, toward his older self. McCree’s left elbow holds Gabe’s upper arm in place, his hand sliding down from Gabe’s jaw to his throat - not holding him any more, but showing that he could in just seconds. His other hand trails down Gabe’s body until he wraps his fingers around Gabe’s cock. He doesn’t jack him, just squeezes gently. It’s still enough to make Gabe swallow a groan.

McCree’s lips brush over the shell of his ear, hot breath caressing his cheek. “Look at yourself, sweetheart. All gorgeous and fucked out and covered in both of us.” His hand starts moving over Gabe, and he’s confused at the smoothness until he realizes he must be using some of Reyes’s come as lube. “I know this is all new to you, but taking a man doesn’t make you less of a man. Doesn’t make you weak.”

Gabe’s breath is starting to get raspier, faster. He can feel McCree’s soft cock, sticky with come and lube, brush up against the back of his thighs, sticking to the hair there. “I can’t wait for you to get to do this in the future. Every time I fuck you it’s like a goddamn revelation. So tight every time, like a virgin, but Christ, you’re anything but.” Reyes is stretched out on the bed and looks nearly asleep, but for the tension in his arms that are folded behind his head.

“Are you looking forward to that? Looking forward to having me inside you, so deep you feel it when I paint your insides? When I come so far in the back of your throat you can’t even taste me?” Gabe isn’t capable of speech anymore, just a soft whine in the back of his throat. Between McCree’s voice and his hand, he’s so, so close.

McCree moves his head away, hooks his chin on Gabe’s shoulder. “Would you let him come on your face, darlin’?”

Reyes still looks half-asleep, but his voice is clear when he says, “I don’t even let you do that, why the hell would I let him?”

“You’re the same person, same DNA. I know you’ve hit your own face before, this would be the same” McCree sounds almost wheedling.

“This is all your kink, not mine. Fuck him however you want, but keep me out of it.”

“That’s why it’s all so great, babe. I get two of you, all to myself.” McCree’s back whispering in Gabe’s ear. “Even if you forget this when you go back, I’ll still know that I’m the first man you ever have.” He bites down on Gabe’s earlobe, and Gabe comes with a moan, pulsing over McCree’s fist and onto the floor. McCree works him through it, going right to the edge of where it gets painful before letting him go. He pulls Gabe’s pants up for him and gives him a nearly chaste kiss on the cheek before moving around to the bed where he wipes his hand off.

“Come on, shower,” McCree says and gives a slap to Reyes’s thigh. He glances back at Gabe on his way to the bathroom. “You can let yourself out.”

A moment later, Reyes and Gabe are alone in the room. Reyes sits up, stretching his arms out and wincing at the cracks from the joints. He looks up, holds Gabe’s gaze.

“He’s something, isn’t he?” Gabe nods dumbly, realizing that other than the order to leave the night before, this is the first time Reyes has really spoken to him. Reyes stands, unashamed in his nudity as he follows McCree into the bathroom.

Gabe looks himself over in the mirror to make sure he’s decent, somewhat embarrassed at his obviously post-coital lidded eyes and rumpled clothing. He gets back to his room, managing to avoid seeing anyone on the way. As eye opening and enjoyable as this has been, Gabe doesn’t know how much more of it he can take.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next day everyone is gathered in one of the labs. Everyone in this case means the commanders and their seconds, Gabe, Genji, Oxton, Dr Ziegler, and the gorilla. The gorilla turns out to be Winston, the scientist. He’s explaining exactly what happened. There’s a great deal of technical nonsense that everyone but Gabe seems to understand. The gist of it was that the chronal accelerator let out a ‘concentrated burst of time’ (at least that’s how Gabe translates it in his head, the real words involve twenty more syllables) that hit Reyes.

No one can exactly explain why or how Gabe got pulled forward, but it seems that generally everything that involves Oxton is experimental and hypothetical. Gabe listens and watches the best he can, and is fascinated by Winston’s enormous hands and the tools he’s adapted to work with such delicate objects.

Winston finishes his speech, and it’s clear at the end that despite everything he’s said he has no real idea of how to fix things. Everyone scatters into their groups, Reyes and Ana and Jack forming their own little triad immediately,  while Oxton and Genji are off muttering together in a corner. McCree steps up next to Gabe. “You doin’ okay?” Gabe nods, then shrugs.

“I just -” For a moment, Gabe feels very young and alone, in a world he’s not supposed to be in. “I just want to go back.” McCree’s hand is heavy and comforting on his shoulder.

Gabe steps forward, feeling small next to Winston. Maybe if he examines the thing that’s been causing all the problems he’ll feel better, feel more in control.  “May I see?” he asks.

Winston smiles, the kindness in his eyes offsetting the terrifyingly large teeth. “Here you go,” he says, “Just be care- oh dear.” Winston lets go of the accelerator a second before Gabe gets his hands around it, and it fumbles out of his overlarge fingers.

The accelerator hits the ground, there’s a flash of familiar blue light, and everything goes black.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Reyes, REYES!” Gabe blinks, or at least tries to. One eye is sealed shut with dried blood, and Gabe crumbles it away until he can open it. Walker, their corpsman, is in front of him, one hand cradling Gabe’s head.

“You got hit pretty hard, okay? I don’t want you to move yet. Stay here until I can grab someone.” Gabe nods dazedly. His head is throbbing in time with the sound of heavy arms fire, and he can barely breathe through the dust in the air. Walker returns with Martin a minute later, and they get Gabe away from the heaviest of the fighting.

His memories around the event are kind of fuzzy, but Martin tells him that after he and O’Brian got under cover, a surface-to-air missile that overshot its target hit the building next to Gabe and threw up a literal ton of debris. A piece of rubble clipped Gabe across the temple and knocked him out for about an hour.

He’s diagnosed with a concussion and given a few stitches, before being thrown back into the fighting the next day. Gabe manages to save his entire platoon after seeing someone trying to set explosives on a night patrol. He gets a commendation and starts to get noticed by the right people.

Two years later, Gabe is ordered to a meeting with his superiors. They tell him that he’s been nominated for Staff Sergeant, and it’s all but a guarantee that he’ll get it once he makes it through training. Afterwards, First Sergeant Rhodes takes him aside.

“I know we just spent all that time getting you excited, but you don’t necessarily have to be a Staff Sergeant.”

Gabe frowns. “What would the alternative be?”

Rhodes leans forward, her eyes serious. “There’s a program that’s about to get started. I’m one of several liaisons for the Marines, and you’re one of just a few people that we’ve tapped for this. It’s high risk, high reward - there’s a not-insignificant mortality rate, but if you make it through…” she trails off. “You’ll be a whole new person.”

There’s something in that phrase that rings the faintest of bells, something about the whole thing that is so close to familiar. _If I do this, everything changes_ , Gabe thinks to himself, and even though he knows he should be more thoughtful he doesn’t hesitate.

“What would I have to do to sign up?”

Rhodes grins widely and pulls an inch-thick stack of paperwork out of a drawer, slams it down in front of Gabe.

“Welcome to your future, son. Welcome to the SEP.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
